All posts by staff

Tory ‘culture war’ against BLM is attempt to stoke racist backlash

Priti Patel describing BLM protests as ‘disgusting’ is probably as low as the Tories can go in their offensive against campaigners for racial equality.

Priti Patel must be sacked forthwith. She’s made no statement about fascist rioters on Capitol Hill in the US or anonymous racist cowards here in the UK attacking Black footballers on social media, but she has found time to direct her hateful bile at fighters for racial justice. 


Sadly it is no surprise that the Home Secretary is attacking those who marched peacefully in their hundreds of thousands all over this country and the footballers – black and white – who continue to confront the racists in our midst by taking the knee. 

Patel whipping up racism


She is a leader of a government that wants to whip up more racism – against BLM, refugees, Windrush victims, you name it – in the hope that we forget about the Tories’ ongoing abject failure to protect people in this pandemic.

She won’t succeed as most British people are not pedlars of vile racism like she is. Shame on this daughter of immigrants for lining up with the far right. But what else can we expect from a Hindu nationalist Modi supporter?

Kemi Badenoch the equalities minister has also been stirring the pot, which further demonstrates the fact that just because you are Black doesn’t mean it follows that you know anything about fighting racism or won’t necessarily do your bit to help racists, unwittingly or otherwise.

Badenoch – another front person for racism

Badenoch is the minister who decided to ‘out’ a Black journalist – Nadia White – at the Huffington Post who had the audacity to ask her a question she presumably didn’t want to answer.

Badenoch described White as ‘creepy’ because she had asked by the minister was not in a video that had just been made to encourage people from the Black and minority ethnic communities to have the Covid vaccine.

That’s a reasonable question – in fact it’s a life and death question given the disproportionate number of deaths among Black and Asian people in the UK, not to mention the similarly hugely disproportionate numbers of poor people who had died because of the criminal negligence of the Tory government.

Wilfried Zaha has a degraded view of anti-racism

Jumping on the bandwagon comes  footballer Wilfried Zaha who has disgraced himself with the erroneous observation that taking the knee is ‘degrading’. The footballer is in need of some education.

Taking the knee is a show of solidarity against racial injustice. It doesn’t have to be kneeling – you could make any number of physical gestures, from a clenched fist to doing a hand stand. It’s not the kneeling that is the important thing, it is the statement against racism and an expression of solidarity.

However, there are some who wilfully misinterpret for their own ends, some – like Wilfred – who are just plain ignorant, and yet others who are racists that seize upon the space provided by the Tories and their supporters to spread their hate.

Now the government wants to force universities to let these racist rabble rousers on to our campuses, in the latest episode of their made up ‘culture wars’. Over our dead bodies!

Brandon Bernard executed – Trump lines up 4 more black men for murder

Brandon Bernard was murdered by the barabaric US government last night.

Bernard was in prison for the alleged killing of two people in 1999 when he was 18 years old.

This is the first Federal execution to take place for 17 years and the first during the period of a lame duck presidency for 130 years.

Four more black men are being fast-tracked for state murder by the Trump administration.

This is the same Trump who has been encouraging violence against his political opponents and praised a white supremacist youth – Kyle Rittenhouse –who shot dead a BLM protester.

NBC reports:

Bernard’s attorney called the execution “a stain on America’s criminal justice system.”

“Brandon made one terrible mistake at age 18,” said the lawyer, Robert C. Owen. “But he did not kill anyone, and he never stopped feeling shame and profound remorse for his actions in the crime that took the lives of Todd and Stacie Bagley. And he spent the rest of his life sincerely trying to show, as he put it, that he ‘was not that person.'”

Windrush scandal rolls on as head of policy resigns over racism

Alexandra Ankrah, the head of policy at the Windrush compensation scheme, has resigned, reports Amelia Gentleman at the Guardian.

Ankrah complains that the scheme, run by a department of the Home Office, is institutionally racist and says the team members she worked with “showed a complete lack of humanity”.

By the end of October, the compensation scheme had been running for 18 months and only £1.6m had been paid out to 196 people. Officials had originally expected thousands to apply and estimated that the government might eventually have to pay out between £200m and £570m. At least nine people have died before receiving compensation they applied for.

Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian

This is a restatement of what is already known, thanks to the outstanding work of Gentleman, but the fact that nothing has changed since the government claimed it was going to put right this travesty of justice is still shocking.

The Windrush scandal saw people from the African Caribbean, who were invited to the UK in the 50s and 60s, declared to be ‘non-British’ despite being colonial subjects of the Crown, and barred from public services, denied access to health services, kicked out of their homes , losing their jobs and – most shamefully – deported from the country or refused entry after visiting the Caribbean to see relatives or go on holiday.

Politicians in parliament have got no where trying to get answers as to why so few have been compensated.

Same discriminatory procedures that created Windrush ‘hostile environment’ scandal being used to limit compensation claims

It turns out that the same procedures that demanded unreasonable documentary evidence from people when they tried to access services, such as payslips from the 1970s, are being used now to effectively bar victims from being compensated.

Of the tiny number (196) who have managed to wring money out of this government, the sums have been an insult, averaging just £8,163 per applicant.

That contrasts with the lavish sums the government is paying out to its well-connected friends to supply the NHS with personal protective equipment (PPE).

One middleman received £21 million for basically doing next to nothing.

Meanwhile, the government resisted funding free school meals for hungry children in this country, is going ahead with a cut to welfare benefits next year and thinks £8k is all that black people victimised by government policy is perfectly adequate.

Windrush scandal – radical action needed to win justice for victims

We are going to have to take radical action to correct these ongoing wrongs – that means action on the streets, our communities and through our unions and campaign groups to fight for justice now.

There are three different bodies that have been set up in response to the scandal: the compensation scheme itself; the Windrush taskforce, whose job it has been to contact those affected and inform them of how to get compensation and thirdly, the independent Windrush Lessons Learned review by Wendy Williams.

The institutional racism of those running the ‘Lessons Learned’ body that 20 team members have been hauled before the civil service “equality, diversity and inclusion”.

The Windrush scandal crimes were a direct result of a government policy known as the “hostile environment”, which sought to scapegoat migrants for the problems of inequality and poverty that afflict the UK.

It all went down under Theresa May’s Tory government as she tried to prove that she and her government were more racist Nigel Farage, who they feared was outflanking them from the right.

They claimed it was all a big mistake and not intentional, but it was part of a deliberate and consciously crafted policy war against all migrants to the UK.

It is a continuing outrage. Enough!

Latest victims

Support the campaign of the Roberts brothers to stay in the UK.

Amelia Gentleman has written the definitive investigation of this continuing scandal and you can order your copy here:

Buy the award-winning book on the Windrush scandal:

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman

Watch her recent talk at the Bookmarks bookshop:

Carmarthen to Leamington Spa: BLM protests Saturday 18 – pictures from around the UK

BLM protests took place all over the UK last weekend, as they have for the past two months. Below we report on just some of them.

“Get your knee off my neck” – Justice for Marcus Coutain

Around 50 people gathered outside Islington police station on Saturday after an officer was filmed kneeling on Marcus Coutain’s neck as was being detained.

Outside Islington police station in north London on Saturday 18 July

BLM protests in Lewsiham

Lewisham
Lewisham

Above: BLM protest in Lewisham, south east London

Below: Smethwick, West Midlands takes the knee

Around 60 people gathered in Smethwick to take the knee for racial equality.

Smethwick BLM protest
Smethwick

Leamington Spa says black lives matter!

Leamington Spa

Above: Leamington Spa

Carmarthen, Wales: 100 turn out for Picton Must Fall! demo

A socially distanced demonstration calling for the removal of the Picton Memorial in Carmarthen and its replacement with a fitting memorial to the victims of Thomas Picton and slavery.

Carmarthen
Picton Must Fall!
Carmarthen

Quarter of young black people in London stopped by cops during lockdown

Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee has got hold of damning evidence of the extent of the oppressive nature of the policing of black (and white) youth in the big cities of the UK, especially London.

Lots of anecdotal evidence has been cited about the increase in stops of young people and now we have the proof.

For black youth the level of harassment has gone way off the scale, with a quarter of all the young black people having been stopped during the lockdown.

This comes after the overpolicing of block parties on working class housing estates.

From the Guardian:

Young black men were stopped and searched by police more than 20,000 times in London during the coronavirus lockdown – the equivalent more than a quarter of all black 15- to 24-year-olds in the capital.

More than 80% of the 21,950 searches between March and May resulted in no further action, according to analysis by the office of the home affairs select committee chair, Yvette Cooper.

The figures equate to 30% of all young black males in London, though some individuals may have been searched more than once.

The Met increased its use of stop and search during the lockdown, compared with a year ago. The force carried out 43,000 stops in May, compared to 21,000 a year earlier, and 30,608 in April, up from 20,981.

Katrina Ffrench, chief executive of Stopwatch, a charity that campaigns against the disproportionate use of stop and search, said: “The number is shocking and saddening. How do those young people feel when this is their city, they’re going about their daily business, could be caring for parents, all sorts of reasons as to why they’re out?” more

Parliament Home Affairs Select Committee hears evidence on stop and search. Hearing evidence this week.

https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cd010bb3-558c-4575-9a23-ec4a5070a3cb

BLM: Wales First Minister announces audit into landmarks with slavery links

From the South Wales Argus:

STREET names, statues, and building names across Wales are to be reviewed as part of plans to “challenge” controversial aspects of the nation’s history, including connections with the slave trade.

First minister Mark Drakeford has ordered an urgent “audit” of public landmarks, which will all be reviewed by a group with expert knowledge of the slave trade, the British Empire, and the history of black communities in Wales, a Welsh Government spokesperson said.

“This is not about rewriting the past – it is about reflecting it with the justice it deserves,” Mr Drakeford said in a statement.

The audit has been commissioned following the recent Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which have brought together activists and members of the public calling for an end to racial injustice and inequality. more

Around 100 people in a sleepy village near Cardiff on Saturday, where artwork was defaced that showed solidarity with the black lives matter movement. First protest in this area I think in its history. Organised by SUTR and local BLM group – report by Hussein